The SDFLA Blog is dedicated to providing news and notes regarding federal practice in the Southern District of Florida. The New Times calls the blog "the definitive source on South Florida's federal court system." All tips on court happenings are welcome and will remain anonymous. Please email David Markus at dmarkus@markuslaw.com

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Judge Cooke sides with Docs over Glocks

A federal judge has blocked the state of Florida from enforcing a
new law pushed by firearm advocates that banned thousands of doctors
from discussing gun ownership with their patients.
U.S. District
Judge Marcia Cooke, who had already issued a preliminary injunction last
September, made her decision permanent late Friday when she ruled in
favor of groups of physicians who asserted the state violated their free
speech rights. She said the law was so “vague” that it violated the
First Amendment rights of doctors, noting the legislation’s privacy
provisions “fail to provide any standards for practitioners to follow.”
The
physicians’ lawsuit, an ideological battle between advocates of free
speech and the right to bear arms, has been dubbed “Docs vs. Glocks.”
The state Department of Health could appeal her summary judgment, which
addressed legislation signed into law last year by Gov. Rick Scott.
In her 25-page ruling, Cooke clearly sided with the physicians,
saying evidence showed that physicians began “self-censoring” because of
the “chilling” effect of the legislation.
“What is curious about
this law — and what makes it different from so many other laws involving
practitioners’ speech — is that it aims to restrict a practitioner’s
ability to provide truthful, non-misleading information to a patient,
whether relevant or not at the time of the consult with the patient,”
Cooke wrote, citing the benefit of such “preventive medicine.”
“The
state asserts that it has an interest in protecting the exercise of the
fundamental right to keep and bear arms,” Cooke wrote in another
section about the Second Amendment issue. “I do not disagree that the
government has such an interest in protecting its citizens’ fundamental
rights. The Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act, however, simply does not
interfere with the right to keep and bear arms.”

The Southern District of Florida blog was started by David Oscar Markus, who is a criminal trial and appellate lawyer in Miami, Florida. He frequently practices in federal courts around the country, including his hometown, the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a former law clerk to then-Chief Judge of the District, Edward B. Davis.